I found a example among my arrangements with some nice chord substitutions which were discussing in other threads. Some were covered by Noteboat in his excellent lesson, others were not but it is maybe good to see some of them in action on guitar in a song. It is an arrangement from a CD I recorded last year as an arranger/conductor/pianist, the guitar part is played by gifted young Dutch jazz guitarist: Eelco v/d Meeberg and the vocals are by jazz diva Denise Jannah (the first Dutch jazz singer to get a contract with Blue Note!!). The orchestra consists of strings, some woodwind, some horns and a jazz rhythm section. The song is the well known standard "Fly Me to the Moon". You can listen to it here:
http://www.soundclick.com/util/getplaye ... 14337&q=hi

First the guitar part:
I was raised in the classical way with notes and never learned to read or write tabs, so I only have the notes. I will try to upload the part in this message, but I am not sure it will work, if it doesn't I won't know until I see the message. If it fails I will try it another way later.

I want to discuss the verse which is played only by guitar and voice (after the short orchestral introduction). The verse is in the key of Bbmajor (note that the chord symbols do not always convey the full sound of the chord: sometimes I leave out the extensions since all the voicings are notated).

First two bars:

Bbmaj.7 G-7 C-7(9) F7(13) | G-7(9) C-7b5/Gb Adim/F# |

first bar is easy: I VI II V
but in the second we see two substitutions one for I and one for V,
- I (Bb) is substituted by VI (G-7)
V -> VI instead of V - I is what is called a "Trugschluss" or in English I believe "Deceptive Cadence", a nice way to trick the listener who is expecting a I

- V (F7) is subst. by II4/3md (C-7b5/Gb) AND by VII2md(Adim/F#) one after an other
the V is replaced by two chords: first an inversion (4/3 means second inversion, so the fifth in the bass) of the II from the Moll Dur Scale followed by an inversion (2 means third inversion, so the seventh in the bass) of the VII from the Moll Der Scale (hence twice the md [moll dur] behind the numerals).

The moll dur scale in Bb goes: Bb C D Eb F Gb A Bb (sixth note is lowered), if you build four note chords on the second and the seventh notes you get these chords. You can freely use chords from this scale to substitute corresponding chords from the major scale as long as it doesn't clash with the melody of course. Also you see another nice trick used: placing a different note other than the root of a chord in the bass, this is not a really a substitution, but it will give you a completely fresh sound with little effort!

Another way to set tags (any tag, not just img), is to input the text I want to tag, e.g. cut & paste a url, then I mark the text and click on the appropriate button, e.g. img. Both tags will be set, one at the beginning of the marked text and the closing tag at the end.
The advantage of this method is, that it allows you "tag" text anywhere in your message. Clicking the button will put the opening tag at the end of the message, which is fine as long as you are tagging what's at the end of the message.

OK, the continuation of the harmonic breakdown (I hope someone is interested in this stuff!!)

third bar (bar nr. 8 )

C- G+/B C-7 F7/A |

the simple progression is just: |C-7 (II) F7 (V) |
but I use a very old trick: a chromatically descending bass line starting on the root of the II (C-7) and ending on the third of V, you can do this with all II -> V progressions in major keys.

bar 9:
| C-7 F7b9/13 Bb6/9 Bb7/13 |

There are actually five chords written in the part but on the recording the second one is skipped!

nothing really fancy is happening in this bar it's just | II V I [V] |
I do like however the voicings of the first two chords one after another (the V is "octotonic" b9/13), they lead nicely to I, the last [V] is between brackets because it is not really the V in the key of Bb but it is in the key of Eb and that is the next chord so: the V (Bb7) in relation to the next chord (Ebmaj.7).

bar 10 + 11:
| Ebmaj.7 Edim. | Bb/F Bb6/9 |
A very common progression which can be found in every gospel and blues:
| IV #IV | I6/4 | (the last chord is just an inversion of I without a real root so no extra numeral for that)
Now, there are many types of #IV which all lead very nicely to either V or I, here we see the dimished type.

bar 12 +13
| Ebmaj.7 Edim Edouble dim | D-7 G7b9b13 |
Actually there is a voiceleading "mistake" in these bars because:
| IV #IV #IVdd | [II V] |
First there is a different type of #IV present in the first bar, the double diminished type, but it is not resolving to I or V like it "should". It resolves to D-7 which creates a hidden parallel fifth in the bottom two voices. It still works though because the voice leading of the top voice is destracting you from the parallel fifth and...well it's jazz not classical music so you can get away whith that sort of thing.
The D-7 can be seen as III in the key of Bb but in combination with the next chord (G7) it sounds more like a II V in a different key (C), hence the [II V] -> it is a II->V but not in the main key of the piece!

bar 13+ 14
|C-7/9 F7/9/13 | D-7 G7 |
Nothing fancy in the sense of substitutions just: | II V | [II V] |
So: D-7 G7 again are not really II->V but they are in C so that accounts for the []
I do like these bars though because the top voice is descending down from the F7 chord until the next two bars actually, this is particularly effective because the melody is staying mainly on one note! I used standard guitar inversions to achieve this effect.

bar 16
|Csus4/7/9 F7/13/C |
|II V4/3 |
The top note keeps descending. On the V the fifth is in the bass (actually the root is missing altogether) to avoid having another fifth jump in the bass (we already had two in a row), some people would call this chord a C-6/9, but as noteboat correctly pointed out somewhere: sixth chords are just inversions of another chord built in thirds)

bar 17
| Dsus4/7/A D7b9 |]
A modulation was needed because the rest of the song is in the key of G (major) so this bar is just |Vsus V| in G.
One could argue the first chord is actually A-7/11 thus creating a II chord, but I feel it more appropiate to be a sus chord because there is no "E" present in the chord, which is the fifth of A-7 and would usually be voiced in jazz and not skipped.

Anyways, that is it. I hope someone can take something out of this babbling of mine. I would be interested to know if King and Noteboat find the sheet strange because I use some slash chords (not many by the way).

Niliov

Last edited by Niliov on March 10th, 2006, 9:30 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Niliov wrote:I would be interested to know if King and Noteboat find the sheet strange because I use some slash chords (not many by the way).

I actually do find it odd in that you have the desired music transcribed out, so in every instance where you use a slash chord it's entirely superfluous as the information is already there. There's no reason to write C-7/Bb in measure 8 when the arpeggio clearly shows the Bb in the base.

I would expect to see that as simply Edim on the chord chart if this is arranged for a single guitar.

"The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side." -- HST

measure 3 &35: the notation is for a D9 (no fifth), but the chord symbol is D7

measure 9: the 'Foct' notation threw me - that's not a symbol I run into very often - as did the notes. Since F is sharped by the key signature, I would have probably written an F note on top instead of the enharmonic Gb (otherwise your F chord lacks any F notes), and I might have named it F#m+/b13

measure 55: because of the C included, I'd write it Dsus7b9

The slashes didn't bother me. I tend to look at the notes anway until I reach the rhythm notation.